Miles to Go
by lifeiswhatImakeit
Summary: One week. One week is all it took for Lily Aldrin to worm her way into his home - dare he say his heart? - and embed herself so deeply that neither of them can ever be just friends again. They are at the precipice of a new era. Bridges will burn and friendships will die - and Barney discovers that he's got miles to go on the road to becoming human.


**MILES TO GO CHAPTER 1**

She doesn't see him.

He follows her figure as she stumbles through the dark, wanting for there to be light so he can catch even the slightest glimpse of the curve of her waist and the swell of her breast – yet grateful there is none. He watches her stub her toe on a chair leg, curse, and limp towards the kitchenette. When she turns on the light, she sighs.

He's up and stalking silently towards her before he even realizes what he's doing, hands clenched into fists. He doesn't make a sound, but when he's a few feet away she turns and her body jolts with surprise, and maybe even a little bit of fear. _Good._

"You scared me, you bastard!" she says, and it echoes hollowly around the apartment. She raises her fist to punch him in the shoulder, like she's done a million times before, and moves too fast for him to dodge it. When it connects, he sways on his feet.

"Barney? You okay?" The kindergarten-teacher in her bubbles to the surface of her voice and his fists clench tighter. He doesn't want her to speak to him like that, like he's hers to care about, hers to own.

He can't meet her eyes – her big gray eyes that stir something deep inside him he can't place. Doesn't _want_ to place.

"You can't stay here anymore," he says finally. The words come a little strangled, and a lot slurred. He can't remember that last time he's drunk this much. His alcohol tolerance is _legen-dary_, and it takes a barrel of liquor to shake him. If only he could stay under this fog forever, where things make sense and you don't have the compulsion to _stay in on a Friday night with a woman and sleep in the same bed with her without making a move._

"Nuh uh." The petite woman crosses her arms over her chest – Christ, _stop looking there._ "We had a deal, and I am _not_ going to let you weasel your way out of it. I'm not leaving until I want to."

"You're not _listening to me!" _he practically shouts, and takes a grim sort of pleasure from seeing her eyes – her big gray eyes – widen. He's the one who never loses his cool – who is never anything more than flippantly cynical. But of course that's not true; he just never lets _them_ see it.

His _friends._

He can't even think it without a sarcastic infliction anymore.

"You. Are. Not. Staying. Here. Anymore." He wields every syllable like a gleaming knife, hoping he's cutting her where it hurts the most – cutting her so deep she'll never come back. To his distaste – and something else – she steps even closer to him, challenging him with the set of her lips, the tilt of her chin. No, he's not deep enough.

"Well here's the thing," she says sharply. "_We_ agreed that I would be your 'anti-wingman' and help you scare away your… – your _one night stands_ as long as you let me stay–"

"I don't need you anymore." He stares her down with his pale blue eyes, the blue eyes that hundreds of women have swooned at the sight of. This woman is definitely not swooning. But all the better, because he would lose his respect for her in a heartbeat if she did.

"You don't need me anymore," she says slowly.

A sharp jerk of his chin.

A shroud of silence falls over them, thick and uncomfortable, like a scratchy quilt that's been left in the attic for much too long.

She chews her lip and stares at something beyond his right shoulder, and he can almost _see_ sparks flashing around her head like a halo, as she whips up the best arguments in a way only someone who has lived with a lawyer for nine years can.

"I'm not leaving until you give me a good reason," she says finally.

"There doesn't need to be a reason. I'm done equals you leave." He can think faster on his feet than anyone he has ever met. It's because he never turns it off, never lets himself lose his edge. So _fuck you_, lawyer with _morals, _and a _best friend_, and a _life._

"Is this about this morning?" she says, and he's this close – _this close_ – to punching a hole in the wall – punching _several_ holes in the wall – until his knuckles bleed scarlet and his home reflects the soul inside him that surely can't still be intact.

"It is not about this morning." But he's speaking through gritted teeth and Lily Aldrin, with all her experience with children, is good at spotting a liar.

She sighs – her second sigh of the night, but by far not the last – and drops her arms from their defensive position.

"That was nothing, Barney, okay? Get it into your head! I am _not leaving_, and nothing has chan–"

_Thud._

Lily is pinned between his body and his stainless steel, state-of-the-art refrigerator. To be honest, he doesn't even remember moving.

"_Everything has changed,_" he roars in her face. Oh, _her face._ Not classically beautiful, no – or even exotically beautiful. But there is something about her smiles and frowns and glares and the life _behind the face_ that it only takes a single glance at her features to make him feel… weak. He hates it. He hates it with a passion that makes him see red.

"That was the only rule! _Don't change anything!_ And you just had to fuck it up like you do to everything."

She struggles beneath him but he's stronger than her – physically, at least.

"Barney, get the _hell_ off me!"

He doesn't answer, doesn't even give a sign he heard her.

Her eyes have captured his, and their warmth – only _her_ eyes could be warm while being cold – settles over him. He feels her softness, her vulnerability and delicacy against his body, from head to toe, and a nameless need rises to the surface of his alcohol-muddled mind. It _aches_, and he wishes that he could stem it but how in fuck can you fulfil a need when you don't even know what it is? His anger bleeds away and all that is left is an exhaustion so deep and encompassing it feels like he's _dying._

"I want you gone by morning," is all he can say. Then he's across the room, sliding into his suit jacket like it's a second skin and slamming the door behind him – not knowing where the hell he's going but relieved all the same that he's going _somewhere._


End file.
